Organic Future - Sparrowhawk Part 17

Emily reached past his shoulder to point at the screen. "Why those?"

"I told you about that case," he said. "Her name was Jasmine. We found her body in an empty pumpkin house in Greenacres." He paused to watch the messages the ferret was throwing onto the screen as it searched, listing clean files, saying, "Nothing...Nothing...Nothing..." Occasionally, it would pause to display a file name accompanied by a suspect line of text. Each time it was an internal memo that mentioned Emily as a fellow Neoform employee. Innocuous stuff, so confirmed by Emily. If he thought the file important, he could easily tell the ferret to copy it onto its own disk for later study. But he simply pressed the keyboard's s.p.a.cebar, and the ferret resumed its search.

"And Chowdhury lives in that neighborhood," Bernie added.

"He's not the only one," said Emily.

"There's Gelarean," he admitted. "And a VP or two."

The computer beeped. The ferret's mission was accomplished. It had found nothing.

"He must keep his notes on paper, or in his head," said Bernie. His voice sounded disappointed.

"Or in the computer in the barn," said Emily.

Sam Dong shook his head. "They're linked. Your ferret would have found anything there. But..." He paused. "He does keep a number of loose disks with him."

Bernie grunted. So that was what had been in the case Chowdhury had carried as he fled the lab. "Perfect security. He leaves no trace in the company's files, no hacker can get into them, we can't get into them. Does he always play things so close to his vest?"

Both Emily and Sam nodded. "He likes to pull the curtain aside all at once," said the latter.

"The fait accompli," added Emily. "I'm sure n.o.body knows of these snakes and jellyfish."

Adam nodded, saying, "He insisted we keep them quiet."

"I'll bet that's not what he has in mind this time," said Bernie. The company would not, he was sure, find genimals that injected illegal drugs very compatible with its public image. Nor would it run the risk of an undercover product line. That could backfire much too easily. No, Chowdhury must be developing his little wonders on the side. The nettles had already entered the underworld trade. The snakes, he thought, had not. Not yet. Not quite. And there would be no surprise announcements, no sudden unveilings.

Bernie wanted very badly to talk to Chowdhury, and he thought he knew where to find him. He would check the barn, just in case the man was saying good-bye to his Armadons. But he did not expect to find him there.

He would be at home. Packing.

Chapter Twenty.

THE WINDOWS WERE curtained by strings of wooden beads. A faint odor of curry permeated the air. Wood-block prints of strange, multi-armed deities adorned the walls. Old photographs of a crowded shantytown sat, framed in lacquered bamboo, on a bookcase shelf.

The beads were a tropical affectation, and he knew it. The prints had come from a secondhand shop in San Francisco, in his student days. The curry, like sin, was something that followed the children of Mother India wherever they might wander, unto the seventh generation. The photographs were of his ancestral home, the coloured ghetto in which his parents had once lived and worked. He had never seen it. He never would. He sat in a padded armchair, his back to the apartment door, positioned so he could see both the prints upon the wall and the photos on the shelf. The chair was an emblem of the land in which he had been born and still lived, but hardly of the land he felt was most truly his. It was a typical American device, a recliner, designed to foster and reward relaxation, a luxury unknown to billions.

His thoughts stuttered. Those billions, many of them, most, had hammocks, didn't they? And hammocks were more comfortable, more relaxing, more portable, cheaper. But they were not luxury, not unless they were made--or sold!--in America of brightly dyed cord, or of canvas and slung from metal frames. Then they might not even be cheaper.

He was not comfortable. He refused to recline in his sumptuous throne. He was not relaxed. He sat erect, clutching the chair arms, staring at the walls, the beads, the prints, the photos. The case full of disks was on the dining-room table. He should, he knew, destroy them before the police got here. Those disks held evidence enough to d.a.m.n him and all his bosses many times over. But...It was already far too late for his own salvation. His bosses had forced him to d.a.m.nation. If he were caught, he would quite happily see them join him in prison. He would feel special glee because they were white, even, really...

Should he flee? The police were not here yet. He had time. He could pack a bag and call a taxi and run to the airport and catch a jet to...Where?

Argentina? Brazil? Paris? Tokyo? G.o.d forbid, Johannesburg?

He shuddered. His hands did their best to shred the upholstery covering the arms of his chair. He could not move. The phone call from Gelarean had galvanized him into fleeing the lab for home. But the motive to run was now exhausted.

A lighted aquarium occupied the bookshelf below the photos of his parents'

home. It was a salt.w.a.ter aquarium, and it held a jellyfish, just one, a large one, the size of two fists, full-grown, the very first of his drug-secreting genimals. He stared at it. He was a success. He was. He could make genes, genes of all kinds, stand up and dance at his command. His bosses applauded his skills. His Armadons would within a year or so begin to displace the Buggies that now dominated the highways. His nettles were already spread wide across the land.

Then why was he cowering here? Why was he about to be arrested and jailed and convicted and sentenced to spend the rest of his life among thugs no better or worse than the South African thugs whom his family had already fled?

He should not have sabotaged the Hawk. He had gone too far with that.

But that cop, that Fischer, Bernie Fischer, had been too close. Nick Gilman had told him so at Gelarean's party. They had a suspect for the Sparrow and the a.s.sa.s.sin bird, and they were on the verge of an arrest. And then that Bernie had continued to hang around the building. He had pretended his interest was in Emily, but Chowdhury knew--yes! he knew!--that Fischer had been watching him, him. He had overheard the cop bragging to Emily about how close he was! And he had known that if the cops ever got him, he would have no more chances to kill Emily.

No more chances to free his Armadons of compet.i.tion from her and her verdammt Bioblimps. No, that wasn't true. Killing her hadn't even been his own idea in the first place. If he had accepted the idea, it had been mostly to get rid of her and her snide reminders of details he had forgotten. He knewthe Bioblimps were here to stay. The company had the patent, and the orders, and it would see to that.

Something else was truer: If the cops got him, he would have no more chances to obey his masters, to free himself of debt and slavery, to grow rich and famous, to avenge his parents in the pages of history.

But they were white. They all were white. The cops, his masters, even Emily. They were the persecutors of his people and of his family. They were no better than the blacks, and they would be sure to see that he got all the blame.

Yes, he had made the cocaine nettle and the drug genimals. He looked again toward the aquarium on the bookshelf. He grunted and levered himself out of the armchair. He crossed the room, moving as cautiously as an old man, feeling that fragile, as if abused by years of illness. He unplugged the cord that powered the aquarium's light and water pump, removed the apparatus, and dropped it on the floor. He ignored the puddle that drained from the pump's tubing.

For a moment he simply stared into the water, at the jellyfish, his jellyfish. Its drug-laden tentacles were translucent white, almost invisible in the tank's small portion of the sea. The bell, tinged with pink and blue, pulsed gently, slowly, moving water in and out of its internal chamber. In the sea, that pulsing would be used for propulsion; now it simply aided respiration.

He turned away and paced, his hands clutching jerkily at each other, around the dining table. He paused at the window, pushed aside the curtain of beads, and stared at the street below, so green, so empty. That, he thought, would not last long.

He turned, stared toward the aquarium, took a pace, and looked down at his box of disks. He took off his gla.s.ses, another affectation, pure window gla.s.s in the wire frames, and threw them to the table. They clattered as he took the final step to wrap his arms around the tank. He grunted again, lifted it free, and staggered back to his armchair. It was heavy. He sat, lurching, water slos.h.i.+ng over his lap and the upholstery. He positioned the tank as comfortably as he could and stared once more into its depths. He ignored the water spill, though his nostrils flared at the smell of salt. The cops would arrive soon, and after that it would not matter.

He had never had anything to do with the Sparrow, though he knew who had.

But yes, he had sent the a.s.sa.s.sin bird. Yes, he had put chips in the Mack, the Tortoise, and the Hawk. But someone else, his master, had given him the chips.

He had given him his orders too, for all but the Hawk. He had had to ask for that chip.

Could he have discharged his gambling debts some other way? Could he have refused to plant the chips? Could he have stopped with the nettle? Or the a.s.sa.s.sin? Or the Mack? Had he succ.u.mbed, surrendered, obeyed, too easily? Even too eagerly?

He remembered his mother. His Mama. For as long as he could remember, she had been confined to her wheelchair, unable to walk, dependent on his Papa and himself for the simplest things. The Boers had broken her legs. They had raided a small, unlicensed clinic where his parents had been treating blacks.

Blacks injured in the demonstrations that before much longer had turned into open warfare. The Boers' days had been numbered, and they had known it. The kaffirs had broken her back. She hadn't been black enough. And she had been treating others who shared that handicap in the newly all-black, dead-black People's Republic of South Africa.

They had it coming. They all had it coming.

He was not sorry.

He was terrified.

But he was not sorry.

They had it coming.

And now the cops were after him. They had figured out who had put the chip in the Hawk. They knew who had done everything. And they were coming for him.

That was what the call from Gelarean had been all about. The cop, Bernie Fischer, had been in Gelarean's office. He had a warrant, and he had said he wanted him, him, Ralph Chowdhury. And he had just left. He was on his way to the lab.

Had Gelarean seemed to wish to keep him chatting on the phone? It did not matter. He had hung up. He had made excuses to his verdammt technicians. He had run.

And Fischer had been in the hall. With Emily. He had ducked and twisted and lost his lab coat and, gasping, ran. For some reason, they had not pursued him. But they would. The Hawk would land on his street and they would climb the stairs to his apartment and they would knock. And...

Fischer had been hanging around all that time, just waiting for him to slip. And he had. He had. He had. They had a warrant, and they were on the way, and...

He stared at the aquarium on his lap.

He wished the jellyfish had eyes. Then it might look back at him. Maybe it would recognize him as its creator. It might even be grateful. Would it raise a tentacle then? Offer him its cnidoblasts, full of bliss? Offer him escape?

But there were no eyes, only spots of pigment around the edges of the bell, light-sensitive but inadequate to the task of forming images.

It was his own design. It really was. And it was a success. He had doubted its appeal, but his friends were very interested in it.

No, not friends. They weren't. They couldn't be. Masters. They were masters. They had gotten him in their grip and encouraged him and stroked his ego until he would do whatever they wished. And he had.

He had.

His vision blurred as salt.w.a.ter brimmed his eyelids and spilled to run down his cheeks. Drops landed in the aquarium, splashed, and marked the front of his s.h.i.+rt with further droplets. His breathing grew deeper and more ragged.

Emily, he thought, had brought that cop, that Fischer, to the lab. They had conspired to spoil his dreams of fame and wealth long before he had done anything himself. He had not known it then, but when his masters told him what to do, they had been giving him the opportunity for justice. He wished he had succeeded. Then the cop would have vanished. He thought of Gelarean's house.And he would now be safe and looking forward to a mansion of his own.

He could, he knew, escape, even at this late moment. Even if his jellyfish had too few brains to offer him a tentacle. He could offer it a hand. He could reach into the aquarium, fondle it, let it discharge its cnidoblasts, its stingers full of heroin, into his skin. He was no addict. He wasn't used to the narcotic. There might even be enough, if he just left his hand in the water, to take him far away, forever.

Or he could get up again, and return the aquarium to its shelf, and rea.s.semble its pump and light. He could go into the other room, where the terrarium was, and select a snake or two. Pale and potent, full of heroin and other drugs. Or there was a nettle on the kitchen windowsill. He didn't use it, except by accident, when he was watering it and his skin brushed a leaf, but it was there.

But snakes and nettles were too much trouble. Oblivion was close enough within his reach as he sat there, the aquarium on his lap.

He stiffened and looked up. Was that the sound of a jet close overhead?

The rush of air over wings arched to brake? A shadow moving swiftly past his window?

He sighed and returned his gaze to the genimal within the tank. Something had indeed landed outside his building. Not hard by his door, not quite, but a little down the block. He heard the ripping sound made by a bird's--a Hawk's--claws as it walked on turf, the clap of the vehicle's closing door, voices with familiar rings, footsteps on the walk outside.

He raised a hand and stared at it as if he had never seen it before. He turned it back and forth, noting the soft brownness of the skin, the wrinkled folds that let the skin slide and stretch over the knuckles, the nails, the hairs, the lines. In a moment...

The voices had stopped. The lobby buzzer sounded. There was silence, and then there were footsteps on the stairs, drawing nearer.

The footsteps stopped. He stared at the aquarium and his jellyfish. He felt for the first time the coolness of the water that had soaked his lap.

His doorbell rang, and his hand, that marvelous structure of sliding tendons and folding bones and stretching skin, his hand began to tremble.

"Ralph?" It was Emily. And with her...

He sighed. He lowered his hand into the water.

Chapter Twenty-One.

EMILY HAD NEVER been in a Hawk before, but the layout of the pilot's pod did not surprise her except in one thing. The clear bubble of the pod itself she had been able to see from the outside, and the single pilot's seat within it. The control panel was clearly a control panel, though it had a few k.n.o.bs and b.u.t.tons that the Tortoise lacked. But when Bernie had said a Hawk could carry two people, or even more if they were not large, she had expected tofind a small seat or bench beside his own.

But there was no room for such a thing. The pod was narrower than she had thought, and the pa.s.senger seat was a tiny shelf in the narrow s.p.a.ce behind the pilot. "That's it," he said when she saw it for the first time. She was hesitating, wondering whether she really wanted to go with him while he chased down Chowdhury. But the hesitation was only brief. She squeezed into the niche, folded herself as comfortably as possible, and said, "Let's go."

The Hawk was clearly designed to function best with only one aboard. It spread its wings, the engine roared, and it lifted from the Neoform parking lot. But its takeoff was not the elegant, a.s.sertive leap into the sky she had watched before. With her aboard, the small jet was slower, struggling, lifting off the pavement and climbing at a shallow angle like some ancient mechanical airplane straining to escape the bonds of gravity.

Like that ancient airplane, once aloft the Hawk had no trouble. She peered through the sides of the pod, past the arch of wing, or she knelt to look over Bernie's shoulder and see ahead. When her breath ruffed his hair, and his scent rose to her nostrils and the tears to her eyes, he took a hand from the control yoke and pointed. "There's the airport." The Hawk banked and swept toward an expanse of foliage and bioform houses subdivided by green roadways.

"Greenacres." She settled back on her jumpseat and quietly, hoping that he would not look in his rearview mirror and notice, wiped her eyes. She had made her decision, and it was the right decision, but scent was famous for its power to evoke memories. And it would be nice if she could have her cake and eat it too, at least for a while.

Her eyes dry, she peered again out the window. Greenacres was still visible to the left. They were descending toward a nearby neighborhood, older, filled with brick walkups, though its roadways were turfed, not paved. Gaps between the trees that flanked the roadways revealed concrete sidewalks.

"I think this is the block we want." The engine fell quiet. The wings cupped to seize the air and brake. The Hawk plummeted toward the ground, brus.h.i.+ng the leaves of oaks and maples and elms and making them fly in swirling gusts. It touched the turf and ran a few steps. "There." Bernie made it walk forward half a block before he pulled it to the curb that still marked the edge of the roadway and pushed at a recessed toggle switch. The bird bent its neck until it could tuck its head beneath the feathers of one wing. The movement hesitated when one great eye was even with them, blinking, staring as if reproachfully. "That will keep it out of trouble."

Bernie held the pod's hatch while Emily squeezed out of her niche and jumped to the ground. Then he slammed it shut, and they looked at the three-story building before them. It was an old building, built of yellow brick and sandblasted until it glowed, though the grime of many decades remained visible in its cracks and pores. Its windows and doorways were framed with limestone; its woodwork had fairly recently been painted a rich, dark brown. The windows themselves were closed to keep out the growing heat of the day and keep in the cool of air-conditioning. Thick draperies concealed the rooms behind the gla.s.s wherever they could see. The mixed aromas of genimal manures wafted from the alleys that flanked the building to either side. It seemed obvious that behind the building, in its bas.e.m.e.nt or at least quite nearby, were stables for the use of the tenants.

"This is not," said Bernie, "a poor neighborhood."

"It's not a rich one either," said Emily. She did not know why she felt impelled to defend Chowdhury against that hint of ill-gotten gains. She didnot like him, and he had tried to kill her, after all. Was she really defending Neoform, her company? Or was it simply truth? The neighborhood was indeed a middle-cla.s.s neighborhood, if a little toward the upper crust of the loaf.

"Let's see if he's home." Bernie led the way into the building's entry.

The inner door, just past a tier of mailboxes, was gla.s.s. Beside it was a speaker and a row of b.u.t.tons, each one marked with a resident's name. He pressed the one for Chowdhury.

There was no answer.

He tried another, and then another and another, until finally the speaker burst scratchily into a "Yes?"

"Police. Buzz us in, please."

"Just a minute." They heard a door close upstairs, and in a moment a woman--her hair short, gray, and unbrushed; her face round and wrinkled; her body wrapped in a faded bathrobe--appeared on the stairs inside. Bernie held up his wallet, with its badge exposed, in one hand. In the other, he displayed the warrant he had brought. The woman nodded and came the rest of the way to the door. "You can't be too careful," she said as she unlatched the door. "Who are you after?"

"Thank you," Bernie said as he pocketed his wallet again. He ignored the question.

Emily glanced at the name list by the door. The helpful woman was apparently Mrs. Jasper, she looked retired, and she was obviously curious.

Emily shrugged at her and followed Bernie up two flights of stairs and down a short hall. The doors she pa.s.sed were painted in bright primary colors. The walls and carpets were more subdued in beige and brown.